


Karkat: attempt alien diplomacy.

by Laylah



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Culture, Alternate Universe, Community: bucketlist, Diplomacy, Dubious Consent, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Public Sex, Service, Sexual Slavery, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 11:50:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You review the terms of the diplomatic meeting one more time, as if they'll be less ridiculous on a sixth reading. "Two ranking officers," you read, "accompanied by no more than one bodyguard and one personal slave apiece." You look at Feferi as if she'll have gotten some <i>other</i> version of the memo.</p><p>She just shrugs with a jangle of bracelets. "Ranking officers means you and me, Karcrab," she says, "and I'm shore we can pick bodyguards...."</p><p>"But fucking personal slaves?" you finish when she trails off. What the fuck kind of decadent society do humans have, anyway?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For a bucketlist prompt that kind of got me right between the eyes:
> 
>  
> 
> _Anyone here read any of the Stargate fics where one or more team members has to pretend to be the slave of another?_  
>  I'd love to see a story where for some reason one of the other trolls has to pretend to be Karkat's sex slave - and this will involve semi-public sex.  
> Eridan ends up being selected, and he's disturbingly convincing.  
> Bonus if he keeps the act up pretty much 24/7.  
> Double bonus if Karkat notices some really strange scars on Eridan's body.  
> Triple bonus if one of the leaders Karkat's negotiating with asks to swap sex slaves for a night.

You review the terms of the diplomatic meeting one more time, as if they'll be less ridiculous on a sixth reading. "Two ranking officers," you read, "accompanied by no more than one bodyguard and one personal slave apiece." You look at Feferi as if she'll have gotten some _other_ version of the memo.

She just shrugs with a jangle of bracelets. "Ranking officers means you and me, Karcrab," she says, "and I'm shore we can pick bodyguards...."

"But fucking personal slaves?" you finish when she trails off. What the fuck kind of decadent society do humans have, anyway? (More importantly, how is a fucking decadent society like that powerful enough to force you into a diplomatic meeting instead of just caving to your might?)

You glare at the terms some more, which continues to not do any good. Personal slaves? Sure, okay, a damaged lowblood with nobody to pull strings for him might wind up doing slave labor. But any troll keeping slaves around for...what, waiting on them and doing stupid petty errands on their behalf? A troll who did that on a regular basis would look soft, and looking soft is a good way to get gutted.

"We otter get someone to pretend," Feferi says. "If the deal goes fishy, we'll want help fighting our way out."

For a second you just blink at her. "Right," you say. It always surprises you when she pulls that highblood scheming stuff out of nowhere; most of the time she's bubbly and friendly and doesn't act like it's any trouble to co-captain with a nobody who earned his officer's commission on his scores instead of his hemochrome. "I want Kanaya for a bodyguard."

Feferi nods. "I'll ask Equius," she says.

"Good," you say. You would have suggested him if she hadn't: not only does he look the part, imposing as hell, but his stupid blood issues mean he really would do anything in his power to protect her. Also, not coincidentally, having him already assigned for the bodyguard role means he can't get the sweats over the chance to be somebody's slave. You consider your options. "I guess we should ask for volunteers to play slave, since we need them to act convincing."

Which is how you come to be explaining this problem to the other members of your cohort on the ship. Trolls are trolls, and you don't want to ask any relative strangers to do personal service for you; there's no way you'd look convincing when the whole time you were worried about being stabbed in the back. And okay, a few of the trolls in your cohort would probably be prime candidates for stabbing also—you have no intention of bringing Vriska, for instance—but at least you know them well enough to have an idea where the trouble could come from.

"So, what you're all up and asking," Gamzee says slowly, "is for a couple of us motherfuckers to go waiting on you hand and foot while you're all off playing politics with them pink monkeys."

"Basically," you allow. "And before you volunteer, I am not taking your sloppy, foul-mouthed carcass along."

"I ain't even any kind of worried about that, best friend," Gamzee says. "Can't see as how I'd be all having the motherfucking patience for that noise."

You make a mental note to thank Gamzee's horrible clown gods for the gift of self-awareness when you have the time. "Right. We need somebody who can pay attention to detail, who'll be good in a fight if we need to have one, and who can also do a good job of pretending to be subservient."

"Send Pupa," Vriska says.

Tavros tries to hide behind Gamzee, even though there is _no_ hiding his ridiculous rack by now, while you and Feferi both say "No," almost in unison. Vriska pouts.

"I'll go," Aradia offers.

Feferi claps her hands. "Perch-fect!" she says, and you wince even though you agree. "You can attend to me."

"Great," you say, and maybe you sound cranky but you do mean it. Aradia's smart, and she's a lot more dangerous than she lets on. "So we just need one more."

"I'll go with you, Karkitty," Nepeta says, bouncing on her heels. You grimace, and not only because you can see Equius looming unpleasantly in your future like a thundercloud made entirely out of hurting.

Eridan pushes off the wall he's been slouching on and says, "Nah, let me do it. Nep ain't got a sense a propriety."

You bite down on the immediate _what, and you do?_ Then you strangle the next two or three things that come to mind, too. You're pretty sure your expression says it all: Eridan has been an arrogant, needy douche for as long as you've known him, and the idea of him making a convincing slave is ridiculous. He keeps meeting your eyes anyway, fucking _placid_ about it, his eyes all deep liquid purple and completely calm.

"Are you shore?" Feferi asks, when you don't take the initiative yourself. "Ab-sole-utely shore you can keep clam and follow orders?"

"Dead certain, Fef," Eridan says. "You wwant me to swwear it?"

Feferi sighs through her gills. "I bereef you," she says. "I just don't want to hear you carping on about it later!"

They have the weirdest relationship you have ever seen. They're not actually moirails anymore, and the breakup was messy, but they still do grossly pale stuff like this with each other in public every once in a while. Sometimes you honestly think they're _more_ pale for each other now than when they were official. And you know if you mention it they'll both look at you like they have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

"Cross my heart, no carpin, no fussin, no wwhinin." He smiles, and he's talking to her entirely, not to you at all. "Sides, if you're in charge and I'm a slavve, then wwe ain't tellin em anyfin about divvision a powwer."

"Hmm," she says. She looks at you. "Karcrab?"

You could ask Sollux, you think. When he's not being a completely inflamed asshole, you like Sollux. Then you try to picture him even _pretending_ to be your slave with anything resembling good grace. No. "Okay," you say. "I'm going to regret this, but okay."

Eridan smiles at you as if you're actually friends. "You regret everythin, Kar," he says fondly.


	2. Chapter 2

The humans receive your landing party in a completely palatial hive in the core of one of their cities. The six of you do your best to make a striking impression when you arrive. You and Feferi are in your dress uniforms, pale pearl gray with hemotyped piping at the seams. Equius and Kanaya are wearing security blacks with their signs picked out discreetly at the lapels. And Aradia and Eridan...you think Eridan must have come up with their "uniforms," pale as your formal dress but far less stiff and more suggestive, and both of them are wearing face paint to match their "owners." The tyrian purple around Aradia's rust-red eyes looks weird, but not half so weird as seeing your scarlet on Eridan's lips.

You march into the diplomatic receiving hive with your skin crawling and your nerves on edge, but you're not baring your teeth and you have Feferi beside you to be the friendly, outgoing one. Still, you aren't thrilled about this whole adventure. Fucking diplomacy, how does it work.

The humans who will be your counterparts are unnerving. Their skin is pale and thin enough that you can see the flush of red blood beneath it—all humans have blood the same color as yours—and their hair is almost pure white. They've sent one male and one female to deal with you, and you wonder if that was intended to send a deliberate message, and if so what it was. Maybe it'll be good you have Eridan around—he's highblooded enough to have studied all this crap, so you can pick his thinkpan for clarification between meetings.

The first meeting is apparently all social horseshit and no actual treaty-making at all. You make small talk with the female human, Rose, about the weather and the seasons Earth has and what a pain in the nook it is to deal with space travel. Feferi chats with the male. Their guardians and your bodyguards lurk at the edges of the room disapproving of everything in silence.

And then at some point it's refreshments time. A little door opens in one side of the reception block and two more humans come in with trays of food. These ones are darker—their skin is light brown instead of sickly pink, and their hair is black—and they're barely dressed. You're still watching them warily when you notice that Aradia and Eridan are going over there to get some of the food from them. Personal service. Right.

Eridan comes over with a plate of food, these little bite-sized fiddly things you can't identify, and kneels next to your chair. The black-haired male human is doing the same thing for Rose, and she takes one of her own morsels to pop into her mouth.

"Their chef's been told wwe're mostly carnivvorous," Eridan says. "So that's a wwingbeast paste on these bits here, an the beady ones are fish roe."

You peer at it suspiciously. "Any good?" you ask.

Eridan's eyes widen like you've scandalized him. That'll be the day. "I ain't about to go tryin it wwithout permission," he says.

You catch yourself before you can snark back at him about how there's a first time for everything. You pick up one of the paste ones—the substrate is a little stiff bread-type thing—and pop it in your mouth. It _is_ pretty good, salty and spiced with something, the meat richer-tasting than most of the stuff you get on shipboard. You try the fish roe, and that's not bad, either.

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see the other human ambassador, Dave, feeding his slave, teasing a little morsel into her mouth. Are you expected to do that? You'll wait and see if Rose does it, too. She seems to be the stricter one about protocol stuff.

Rose eats about half the stuff on her plate before she says, "Hungry, John?"

Her slave smiles, a stupidly friendly expression. "Pretty much always," he says. "May I please have a bite?"

"Good boy," Rose says, and puts food in his mouth. His tongue laps at her fingertips and the _pinkness_ of it is shocking.

You glance at Eridan. "May I havve a bite, my lord?" he asks without missing a beat, and without sounding anything less than sincere.

"I guess since you ask nicely," you say, and pick up one of the fish roe ones for him. He licks his lips and opens his mouth and this is _weird_ ; maybe it's because humans don't have the same sharp teeth or the same violent impulses trolls do, but the idea of putting your fingers where somebody could bite them is creepy as hell.

Eridan doesn't bite. He takes the food in his mouth and lets the soft wetness of his lip drag along your fingers as you withdraw, and your bloodpusher speeds up because _what the hell_ , but you try really hard to keep that from showing on your face. You've been learning, since you joined the Fleet, how to not be screamingly obvious about everything you're feeling at all times. You feed yourself, and you feed Eridan, and you act like this is normal. Feferi is making Dave laugh. You're not embarrassing yourself terribly with Rose. You can do this.

"I'm so glad we could have such an amiable encounter," Rose says to you as Eridan and her slave take the empty trays away. "There were those among our people—and I am sure you faced similar complaints—who were convinced that our two races could never enjoy the pleasures of civilization together. It gives me hope for tomorrow's negotiations."

You nod, wishing you had a better idea what the right answer was. "Yeah, we have our share of warmongers. But I'm pretty sure we can make them understand that, ah," don't say _fighting you is too costly_ , that's too honest and sounds weak, "an alliance would be better for everyone."

Rose smiles. "Indeed. We have more in common than our naysayers would contend."

The slaves—no, fuck—Eridan and the slave come back with fancy glasses of something pale yellow and fizzy. The stem of the glass is cool in your fingers. You hesitate, not drinking immediately, and Rose reaches out to tap her glass against yours so they chime.

"A toast," she says, "to shared pleasures."

You can't hide your confusion. "A toast?" you ask.

She smiles. "Ah, excuse me," she says. "It's an old Earth custom. That is, a salute to some wish or some idea we wish to honor together before we drink. The gesture is entirely symbolic in its present form, though apocryphally it was once far more violent: the drinkers would knock their glasses together hard enough to spill their drinks into each other's goblets, thus ensuring that neither could poison the other without also being poisoned himself."

"Huh," you say. You aren't sure whether that was a threat or just a charming anecdote about humans having shitty backstabbing origins just like trolls. You eye your glass. "Do I say it back?"

"If you wish," Rose says. "Or you could add another item of your own."

Out of the corner of your eye you can see Eridan's chin move down just a fraction, like the tiniest nod in history. Yes, add something else? Yes, it's safe to drink? Both? You should have come up with a code ahead of time.

"A toast to our new alliance, then," you say, and touch Rose's glass with yours.

"Of course," she says, and drinks. You follow her lead.

The drink is sour, and the bubbles tickle your palate; even though it's cool in your mouth, it leaves a warm feeling down your protein chute, so you're pretty sure it has alcohol in it somewhere. Fine. Okay. You can handle your liquor.

Sort of.

You get through the first glass okay but then there's a second glass, and you're taking it slowly but you're a bit fuzzy in the head and glad that Rose is just making small talk with you because fuck, you'd be terrible at negotiating like this. Your skin feels too warm.

And then she sets down her glass and leans back in her chair and says, "John," like it's a command.

Her slave sinks to his knees beside her chair. "What can I do for you?" he asks with a grin. Like he's happy to do it, like he's happy to be at her beck and call for little petty favors. Is he just stupid? Do humans have psychics who can mind control the weaker members of their species?

"Service me," Rose says coolly, reaching down and pulling up her skirts. Your train of thought derails and plummets into the chasm of _what the fuck_ , to crash and burn with no survivors. You go completely still, _not_ looking down, and for a second you dare a glance over at the others. Dave has the black-haired girl in his lap. This is unbelievable.

John buries his head between Rose's thighs and makes noises you're sure you shouldn't be hearing. Rose leans back in her chair, her posture going loose and relaxed. She's watching you. Waiting for you to be outraged? You have no idea what the diplomatic way of getting out of this is. You have no idea if there _is_ a diplomatic way to get out of this.

"Eridan," you say, and you're proud of the fact that you don't sound like you're choking to death on your own shocked embarrassment. Maybe he'll be able to prompt you for what to do from here.

"It wwould be my pleasure," Eridan says, and kneels.

You meet his eyes and you're trying very hard to communicate _you don't have to_ but he's not picking it up, just reaching for your belt and the buttons on your pants. You wonder if he's ignoring your discomfort on purpose because hey, a chance to get at your bulge. You wonder if ritual suicide would mean you could forget you'd ever had that thought.

His fingers are cool and confident and he strokes you stiff with little showoffy strokes and you sort of want to die inside. It feels good. You weren't really expecting him to be good at this.

He lowers his head and takes your bulge in his mouth, completely shameless and completely perverse, and if you don't yank him back by the hair immediately it's mostly because you are _terrified_ of catching his teeth in a sensitive spot. Then information from your nerves makes it up your spine to your overclocked thinkpan, and you decide you'd kill anyone who tried to remove him. He does this thing with his tongue against the tip of your bulge and your claws shred the upholstery of your chair. Oops.

Rose only laughs at the destruction, though. "He's talented, then," she says. "I apologize for not, mm, having the foresight to provide you something sturdier."

"D-don't mention it," you manage. Your voice should be steadier, fuck. This woman has highblood ice in her veins and you don't want to show weakness but Eridan is _sucking on your bulge_ as if that's in any way a thing that people do. "It's h-hardly the sort of thing that comes up ahead of time."

When you glance over at the others, they've pretty much caught up to you in the impropriety race: you can see Aradia's head moving between Feferi's thighs, and Feferi is blushing right out to the tips of her fins. Dave's face is mostly still calm but his thin skin betrays him; his face is turning bright pink as his slave...does whatever humans do for each other.

Eridan's fingers slide up the inside of your thigh and hook into the open crotch of your pants. You clamp your hand down on his wrist before he can actually reach for your nook. He makes a sound like he's pouting, and you can feel the vibration of the sound in his lips and tongue against your bulge. You shudder. It feels good, feels amazing, but you're _not_ going to spill your genetic material in front of the humans.

Which...means you're going to have to pretend to be satisfied with this, aren't you? Maybe the humans won't be able to tell. Maybe they don't climax the same way trolls do. Maybe—oh god, maybe Dave is having some kind of climax right now, the way he's gone tense like that. You are _watching an alien have an orgasm_. Nobody ever warned you diplomacy would be like this.

You pull Eridan off your bulge when Rose's eyes flutter closed; her blunt teeth catch her lip as she shivers, and you press your fingers to Eridan's lips to signal him to please, please just not say anything about how you're obviously not done. He licks your fingertips. You glare as best you can through the haze of alcohol and frustration.

By the time Rose is...done...you've buttoned your pants back up, trying to ignore how uncomfortable that is when your bulge is swollen and sensitive. You smile at her when she opens her eyes again, and she smiles back, and you think she's probably completely deadly even right now. "Your hospitality," you say hoarsely, "has been excellent."

She laughs gently. "But you have had a tiring day, and we will have much to discuss tomorrow," she says. Totally gracious, giving you exactly the answer you were hoping for. She glances over at Dave. "We'll have John and Jade escort you to the suites that have been prepared for you."

You stand up, reaching out reflexively for Eridan's shoulder to steady yourself. You shouldn't have had that second glass of liquor. "Thanks," you say to Rose. "That would be great."

Feferi looks like she's just about as distracted as you feel. Aradia looks like she's trying not to grin too hard, like she's just won a prize. Kanaya and Equius fall in behind you as the human slaves lead you out of the room, and you don't look back to see their reactions but you can smell how sweaty Equius has gotten from watching.

You suddenly realize how very, very, _very_ lucky you are that you weren't doing that little performance with Nepeta, and choke on the hysterical laughter that bubbles up in your throat.

Kanaya is at your side immediately, hand on your elbow. "Are you all right?" she asks.

"Fine," you say, even though you aren't. You're so far from it. But you're not poisoned or anything, which is probably what she was asking. "I just need, um, some rest."

The human girl looks back at you and beams. She's clearly from the same breeding stock as the male is; their faces are almost identical. "Fortunately, here you are!" she says, opening a door. "Parlor, two bedrooms, with your slime bath things in them, and two bathrooms off to either side. There's a little appearifier in that corner, so if you need anything just call downstairs and it'll be sent up for you."

"Looks fin to me," Feferi says, smiling back. "Karcrab, anything you're fishing for right aweigh?"

"I wish for no more fish puns," you groan, lost cause that it is. "Shoo," you tell the humans. "We'll be fine until tomorrow."


	3. INTERLUDE: be the human highblood.

You can feel Dave's need to say something like a tangible weight on the air. You pick up the glass of champagne you'd set aside in favor of more visceral pursuits and sip it, waiting. He has never been good at keeping his peace.

"Man," he says, "I _cannot_ believe you went there. Hey, twitchy little alien attack beast, welcome to Earth, where sexing up your slave in front of someone you barely know is totally cool and acceptable behavior. Just met? Let's trade orgasm faces, it's like the handshake of my people."

You set the glass down again. "It was a gamble," you admit.

"What. Seriously." You don't have to be able to see his face to know he's raising his eyebrows at you. "Rose, a gamble is when you eat the leftovers in the back of the fridge even though you can't remember when you shoved them in there. Playing public sex chicken with the ambassadors from intergalactic fuckyouupistan is so far beyond that level it needs a new word. A new _lexicon_."

He's pacing, which means he's afraid he's going to make a facial expression and doesn't want you to see it. "It was a calculated risk," you insist. "And it paid off perfectly. They're confused and exposed and they don't know what to expect from us, and they've demonstrated that they're willing to go to lengths they find uncomfortable in order to avoid offending what we present as cultural norms."

Dave shakes his head and you think you catch him in a smile. "I gotta hand it to you, Madam Lalonde. I don't know anyone else who could provide a more precise political analysis of watching cute aliens bang."

"Thank you, Mister Strider," you say. "It is always a treat to have one's talents appreciated." You rest your elbows on the arms of your chair and steeple your fingers together. "Now. We should make plans if we're to press our advantage tomorrow."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid this is all of the backlog! Roach has promised to keep pestering me about this one, though, so that I don't let it languish for months at a time like I do entirely too often. :x
> 
> I know exactly where they're going; it's just going to be a matter of writing all the words to get them there.

Equius and Kanaya take their bodyguard duties seriously, combing the hivesuite for potential threats or listening devices. Feferi and Aradia flop on one of the cushioned seating platforms so Aradia can do something with Feferi's hair. You are tired and cranky and way too aware of your bulge. You hate diplomacy.

"I'm going to investigate the ablution block," you announce, and stomp off in that direction.

Eridan follows you.

When you realize he's coming _in_ to the ablution block with you, you turn on him. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"Takin care a your needs?" he says. "Like a slavve is supposed to."

"No," you say.

"Kar," he says, really quiet, "just cause wwe ain't out in front a them all doesn't mean wwe're done playin the game. They might be wwatchin some wway that wwe don't know about, an you could really use the practice anyhow."

You wince. "I was that obvious, huh?"

He makes this face like he's trying to think of a nice way to tell you how much you suck. "Ros probably figured somethin wwas up," he says. You'd guessed _that_ much. "Maybe she'll just put it down to bein in a new place an not used to humans yet, but not if you keep actin like you got no idea wwhat to do wwith me."

"We should have—" You stop yourself before you can actually suggest that you should have switched roles, because as awkward as this is, it's way better than doing it the other way around. You run your fingers through your hair and tug on it. "Okay. So what are we doing here, then?"

"Here," Eridan says, reaching for your jacket buttons really slowly so you can see him moving. "I'm helpin you undress. Personal servvice."

You sigh explosively but otherwise hold still so Eridan can remove your jacket. "Coddling me."

Eridan makes a noncommittal little noise—a fucking political noise—and hangs your jacket up on a rack. "It's interestin, don't you think, howw they don't mind all this soft stuff. Howw they're mean fuckin bastards in battle and then this is wwhat they do wwith their off time."

" _Interesting_ ," you repeat icily, hoping that your tone makes it perfectly clear that is not the word you would have used to describe it. Eridan takes your shirt off.

"Wwhat if they're on to somethin?" he asks as he kneels to deal with your boots. "I mean, modern Alternian culture is fixated on the imperial wwarrior ideal, wwith no patience for indulgin in decadent stuff, but historically—"

You should be grateful that he's talking about something completely unrelated while he takes off your pants but the friction still makes you miserable. "Can this wait until morning?" you ask. Eridan looks up at you with his eyes wide and you have the absurd urge to pet him. "It's been a long day and everything is fucking brutally weird, and I'd like to get some sleep before I make another attempt to tackle the problem of Humans: What the Fuck."

Eridan kisses your bare hip bone. "Anythin you say," he says. "That's how this wworks." You put your hand on his shoulder for balance as you step out of your pants and then he ought to get up but he doesn't. He's looking at your bulge. "You...wwant me to finish wwhat I started out there?" he asks, and you can hear how desperately he's trying to sound casual.

"No," you say, and you sound shakier than you want to because your globes _ache_ by now, but playing parts where someone can see you is one thing and actually pailing someone you're not in a quadrant with is another. You'd feel cheap and dirty. More than you already do.

"You sure?" Eridan asks. He looks like he's pleading, what the fuck, you can't do this.

"If you want to do something for me," you say, "you can go check the mixture in my recuperacoon and make sure it's balanced. I'm going to want to sleep like the dead after I get done in the trap."

That actually seems to work: Eridan brightens immediately. "I'll get on that right away, Kar. It'll be straight-up fuckin perfect by the time you're done in here."

"Thanks," you say. He ducks out of the ablution block with your clothes and you turn your attention to the water faucets in the trap. You have to turn the water all the way to its warmest setting before it's really pleasant; humans' thinner skin must make them more vulnerable to heat.

You get in the trap and scrub yourself clean, quickly and mechanically. Then because you can't help yourself you curl a hand around your swollen bulge and stuff three fingers up your nook, leaning against the tile as the water drums against your skin. It aches and you can't get as deep as you want to, as deep as you really _need_ ; you chew your lip bloody and make embarrassing noises as you force your stupid body to cooperate. Eventually you manage to wrench out a raw, unsatisfying finish, hips jerking as you spatter a pathetic amount of genetic material on the floor of the trap. It dilutes into the water and runs down the drain in thin scarlet threads.

You catch your breath, shut off the water, and find yourself a towel. Now you just have to go fake normal for the rest of your allies until you can reach the safety of your recuperacoon. Maybe you'll feel better tomorrow.

You hate diplomacy.


	5. Chapter 5

Spoilers: you don't feel better the next day. Every little touch makes your nerves jangle, starting with Eridan fixing the disaster of your hair and continuing through breakfast and then the first round of meetings. The humans are conniving shitheads. You wind up arguing with Dave for half the morning and a revolting percentage of his argument comes in the form of impromptu slam poetry. About _trade restrictions_. Which somehow involves an awful lot of innuendo about human bulges.

There's a break for food after a few hours of argument, and you get to adjourn to a trolls-only space for a little while. You have never been so glad to see Eridan Ampora in your life. "That's a seared moobeast steak wwith spices crusted on," he says as he brings you a plate, "an the wwhite mushy stuff is some kind a root vvegetable?"

You pick up the tined eating utensil, which has four tines instead of three. "Fuck, something I can make bleed a little. About time."

Eridan smiles at you in this way that's almost sweet. "Meetin's not goin so wwell?"

"I swear half the things that come out of the Dave human's mouth sound like black solicitations." You stab your steak and are gratified to feel the meat squish in the not-too-cooked-to-be-edible way. "Which is fucking ridiculously inappropriate for a diplomatic meeting, isn't it? And I don't even know if humans _do_ blackrom."

"I can maybe try to find out," Eridan offers as you stuff food into your mouth viciously. "Jade an John are pretty easy to talk to, and Ar's been askin 'em questions about other human stuff all mornin."

"Okay," you say with your mouth full. "Do that."

He nods, and again you see the little brightening in his expression. "I'd guess, if you wwant me to vventure an opinion," he says, and then hesitates. You gesture for him to get on with it; you want as much information as you can get here. "Evven if they do, he's probably just fuckin wwith you right now. Tryin to get you to think more about him an less about wwhat he's sayin."

That makes a hideous amount of sense. You try the vegetable mush, which is unpleasantly soft but tastes less bland than you were afraid of. More spices? "It's so much easier when we can just _bomb_ them into submission," you complain.

Eridan stifles a giggle. "Ain't it alwways," he says.

You're three quarters of the way through your food before it occurs to you that he's just standing at your side, not eating a damn thing. "Fuck," you say, looking at your plate and then back at him. "I didn't even think—are you hungry?"

"Nah, wwe got stuff wwaitin for us in the kitchen," Eridan says. "You ain't gotta share this time." He fidgets a little. "Nice a you to wworry, though."

"I'm not worrying," you protest. "I'm just...trying to figure out what the fuck the humans think is normal behavior. When they're damaged enough to think that includes keeping slaves for fun and pailing them in public."

"Don't forget you got Fef helpin, too," Eridan says. "She's bein cute an swweet wwith 'em but she's got clawws underneath, an that'll showw before you make anythin final."

You nod. That's one of the reasons Fleet ships have two captains in the first place, so that there are two minds working on the highest-level problems. (The other reason is that it drastically decreases the chances of a captain going rogue if she doesn't have sole command.) You are clearly still not used to it yet. "I'll try to remember."

Eridan fidgets a little more and ducks his head. "An you knoww, if you wwant, you could tell me to givve you a foot rub or somethin tonight."

"Gamzee would kill you," you point out. That's an absurdly pale thing to suggest.

"Wwell, I mean." He does at least look a little nervous at that possibility. "It wwouldn't be like real romance, wwould it? Just doin wwhat I'm supposed to, helpin you feel better so you can do your job."

You stare at him for a minute, trying to figure out what the hell he thinks he's doing. This feels different than his usual attempts to squirm his way into any possible scrap of romantic attention he can get from anything that breathes, but you're having trouble putting a claw on exactly _how_. It just...is.

He collects your empty plate before you figure it out. "Anythin else I can get you right noww?"

"No," you say slowly. You bite down on the impulse to say something like _Unless you have some magical fucking way to make this stop being so fuckoff unbearably weird_ , because one of the things you've learned over the last few sweeps is how to stop talking instead of making things worse. "No, just. Go get your own food and see what you can learn from the other slaves about Dave and Rose."

Shit, you did it again. _Other slaves_ , as if he really is one.

Either he doesn't notice (unlikely) or he doesn't think he should correct you. He's probably still worried about you being overheard. "Good luck wwith the rest a the day, my lord," he says, and bows to you before he leaves.

You look up to find Feferi watching you. " _What_ ," you snarl.

"Nofin," she says, which would be fine except that she follows it up with, "I think you're working out reely whale!"

"Augh!" you retort, and get up from the table before you can succumb to the temptation to flip it.

The afternoon goes slightly better than the morning, if only because you pass things off to Feferi when the specifics of a current issue—say, mineral rights for asteroids in the demilitarized zone—threaten to give you a migraine. You watch the way her bubbly enthusiasm shuts down Dave's swagger and you think you can see Rose's lips thinning just a tiny bit like she's annoyed with that development. Good. Two can play the diplomatic fuckery game.

After the evening meal they've arranged for you all to go see some human cultural thing, a play about would-be quadrantmates needing to sneak out to a forest to meet up with each other, and weird misunderstandings and meddling and for some reason a guy with a hoofbeast head. Despite yourself, you get caught up in the story, barely suppressing a little growl of frustration when yet another of the characters flips from red to black for the yellow-haired girl and it _still_ doesn't go anywhere.

Eridan rises up on his knees from where he's been sitting by your feet. "John an Jade swwore they don't do blackrom," he murmurs in your ear. "Didn't seem to get quadrants at all."

"Then what the shit is this?" you whisper furiously.

"Hell if I know, Kar." Eridan shakes his head. "Looks like classic black-red reacharound territory to me."

Kanaya leans over you both, resting a careful hand on your shoulder. "You are drawing Rose's attention," she points out gently. "Perhaps discussion of the narrative's themes should be postponed until we have seen its resolution?"

"Sorry," Eridan murmurs, and sinks back down to sit beside you.

By the end of the play all the characters seem to have sorted out their red quadrants, though you're still pretty sure the king and queen in the forest are going to flip black again within a perigee. It's a weird little display of human shenanigans and deviousness. Still, it's _way_ more pleasant than having to halfway-pail Eridan in public while the humans scrutinize you for any sign of weakness. You thank Rose and Dave for exposing you to this fascinating example of human art. Feferi tells them she had a great time. You all make it back to your quarters without having to do anything hideously embarrassing with anybody's bulge.

"Seriously?" you say when you all get settled in the sittingblock in your suite. "No quadrants at all?"

"That's wwhat they said," Eridan confirms with a shrug.

"But that is not at all what that production suggested," Kanaya protests.

"Seriously!" Aradia says. "The kids from the city were falling all over themselves trying to sort out their concupiscent stuff the whole time."

"And the forest king's servant was clearly supposed to fill a conciliatory role, though he managed it atrociously," Kanaya observes.

From there it's easy to settle into comfortable bickering about the show, and whether the servant was supposed to be the king's moirail (and doing a terrible job) or the king and queen's auspistice (and doing a terrible job) and what the _hell_ was going on with that stooge in the hoofbeast mask. Equius suggests that perhaps the forest setting is meant to represent wildness and confusion of feelings, which is why the young flushed pairs go back to the city when they've sorted themselves out, and why the rulers there behave so execrably. You want to argue with him on principle because he's a jerk, but it is a pretty reasonable point.

You've started out with Feferi and Aradia sitting on one of the cushioned platforms while you sat on the other one and Eridan kind of hovered. As the conversation wears on, though, Aradia drifts into Feferi's space and starts playing with her hair again. You wonder if they really _are_ going pale for each other, and if so how weird that must have made yesterday.

Then you realize Eridan's getting quieter and hunching in on himself, and he keeps looking over at you like he's trying to ask you for something without actually doing it. Which is annoying as shit except that it's also kind of pathetic in a way that _does_ things to you. Goddamnit.

"Come here," you tell him. "You made me an offer earlier."

Fuck, _why_ does that make him look so grateful? He sinks to his knees in front of you and starts taking your boots off. "Anythin you need, Kar," he says. When he gets to work rubbing some of the tension out of your feet, Equius makes a sound like he's choking to death.

"Are you all right?" Kanaya asks.

"Fine," Equius says and it's obvious he's lying and your cheeks feel like they're on fire. You can't do this with an audience. You're just not that kind of troll.

You flee to your respiteblock.

You stand there taking deep breaths and shaking a little bit, trying to make yourself just calm the fuck down. It shouldn't be _more_ awkward to have Eridan give you a little bit of pale attention than to have him perform human sexual perversions on you in public. What the fuck is wrong with you?

"Kar?"

Two respiteblocks for six trolls means you can't exactly kick him out. "It's not your fault," you say as you turn around. "So don't give me that sad-mewbeast-in-the-rain look."

Eridan straightens his shoulders like he's trying to stop looking pathetic and it doesn't quite work, and that actually gets to you _more_ than the face he was making before. "Just tryin to do my part, Kar," he says. "I'll do anythin you need, but I ain't a mind reader. You gotta tell me wwhat you wwant."

"What I _want_ —" You stop yourself before you can tell him how badly you want to go home, because there's nothing he can do about that, and it's the worst kind of shitty hypocrisy to get upset when he acts pale for you and then want to surprise feelings-jam him thirty seconds later. You've learned that much since you were a terrible overwrought adolescent, at least.

He stands there waiting for you to sort your shit out, making what you're starting to think of as his good slave face: sort of patient, but really focused, really interested in whatever you're about to say or do. It's honestly kind of nice, feeling like you're going to get taken seriously, whatever comes out of your mouth. You spend a lot of time having to fight for that much respect.

"Okay, one, that just felt really pale, and that's weird," you explain. "And two, I'm kind of not actually an exhibitionist at all?"

Eridan gives you that fond little smile he's been doing lately and god help you it's starting to look nice. "Wwell, I'm sure that second part's gonna break hearts all ovver the Fleet for swweeps to come, wwith you lookin so fine," he says, and that's so ordinary, so _Eridan_ , that you bark out a laugh and let a little tension go from your shoulders almost by accident. "Promise I ain't pale for you, though," he adds more quietly.

You swallow hard and give him a suspicious glare. "I'm waiting. This is the part where you tell me that makes it okay to do hideously pale things together, isn't it?"

"I ain't tellin you anythin, Lord Vvantas," he says. "An if you got directions for your humble servvant all you gotta do is say so."

Technically that means you _could_ tell him not to suggest things like that anymore. "Whatever," you say. "I guess it did feel nice." You plop down on the floor next to your recuperacoon, leaning back against its solid bulk. The soft hum of the filter is a reassuringly familiar sound. "Go ahead."

Eridan sits down cross-legged in front of you, slips his hand under your right heel, and puts your foot in his lap. He smiles like you're doing _him_ a favor, then digs his thumbs into the ball of your foot to work the tension out.

It's the best part of your day.


	6. Chapter 6

When food is brought to your suite the next morning, it also comes with the news that the day will be spent on recreational activities instead of at the negotiating table.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" you summarize after reading the handwritten note that arrived with the breakfast tray. "This is a steaming load of rancid grubshit!"

Aradia swats you. "No gross metaphors while people are eating," she says. You glare.

"This is a stalling tactic, is it not?" Kanaya asks as she takes a look at the note herself. "There is no reason for any of the things on this itinerary to be immediate requirements."

"They probably wwanna keep us off-balance," Eridan says. He's picking delicately at little slices of pink-fleshed fish.

"Ampora is likely correct," Equius agrees. "We should be prepared for the possibility of, ah, further unorthodox suggestions." His cheeks go blue and he mops at his face with a napkin.

You groan. "I've had enough unorthodox human suggestions to last me the rest of my life already."

"At least we'll be betta prepared this time," Feferi says.

"Right." That shakes you out of your gross self-pity for a minute. You look at Eridan. "I want some kind of prearranged yes-or-no signal so you can let us know if things get too freaky without breaking character."

He blinks in surprise a bit and then his face crinkles up, stupidly soft. You brace yourself. He's about to say something too personal about your reasons, as if you wouldn't make the same demand no matter who you were working with. "That's awwful considerate a you, Kar," he says.

You hunch your shoulders. "Just trying to look out for my team."

Eridan takes your hand and brings it up to rest against his cheek. "You do this if you need to check in," he says, "an I'll kiss your hand if I need a wway out."

"Perchfect," Feferi says before you can protest, maybe demand something less romantic-looking. "It fits with how touchy-eely they get with theirs."

You squeeze your eyes shut so you won't have to look at the surprised delight on Eridan's face. This trip is _messing_ with you.

After breakfast you go to meet the humans for your stupid tour of the city. Everyone is polite but you're thinking of them as _the enemy_ the whole time you get shuttled around to look at statues and buildings and quaint little patches of green space. You let Feferi do most of the talking. She remarks happily on how nice it is to see an alien city in one piece, instead of looking at bombed-out husks and trying to imagine what it was like before. Rose agrees that's never as satisfying.

You spend the afternoon at some abysmally stupid human sporting event. They might be trying to kill you off with boredom. You don't have anything against sports on principle; you're not that bad at bonebreaker or murderball. But at least in troll sports things _happen_. You think a good three-quarters of this game you're watching is just humans standing around in a field waiting for somebody to fucking do something already.

It gets your guard down, though. You're eating your dinner and relaxing as much as you can in mixed company, not expecting trouble in the immediate future, and then Rose says, "The slave you've brought with you is extremely appealing, you know. I'd love to borrow him for the evening."

You lock up for a second, completely still, which is a dead giveaway but the only course of action you can take in that instant besides coughing your food all over the table. Is she fucking with you? She's sipping her glass of terrible alcohol and looking entirely calm. "I'm surprised you'd want to let one of us get that close," you say, stalling for time.

Rose smiles at you. "Perhaps I'm placing my trust in your good faith contributions to the peace process," she says. She sets her glass down. "Or perhaps I'm confident in my ability to meet any potential threats and emerge triumphant."

If she were a troll, this would be the point where you tried to figure out whether she wanted to kill you or just pail you until you begged for death. But humans, apparently, don't work like that, so there's nothing to figure out. She will read the treaty's failure in your entrails if you show any weakness here. You drain your goblet. "I assume you'd offer me the same courtesy," you say, "and not just leave me unattended all evening."

"Of course," Rose says. "I would be happy to loan you John."

Eridan shows up at your elbow then with the wine bottle. Thank fuck for the chance to talk to him, now. You hold up your hand to stop him just refilling your glass, and he leans down in easy reach. "Somethin else my lord prefers?"

You cup your hand against his cheek and stretch up to murmur right into his ear. "She wants to borrow you for the evening."

He should kiss your palm then. If you had Vriska's powers you'd be trying to force him to do it. You're planning to fake an illness or something, a reaction to something you ate, whatever, a good reason to need your own attendant to look after you.

Eridan just smiles and murmurs, "Happy to do anythin I can for the peace process," the utter self-destructive idiot. Probably just thrilled at the chance to get pailed, even by an alien, and that thought makes you hot and furious low in your gut for the two seconds before he stands up and bows neatly. "I'll get the other bottle straight awway, my lord."

You make yourself smile. You don't have any good reason to call it off if Eridan doesn't mind. You'll be in control of whatever happens between you and John. Eridan will...shit, he's been teasing his way toward caliginous with Vriska again lately. He'll _survive_ whatever Rose has in mind for the evening, and he probably won't even have the sense to learn fear.

"By all means, then, feel free to indulge. Just send him back when you're done so he can get to his recuperacoon." Make it sound like it's for her own good, you tell yourself. "A troll who doesn't sleep in sopor gets violent."

"I will be sure to send him home before he turns into a pumpkin," she says, which must be some kind of weird human idiom. Eridan comes back with a different bottle to refill your glass, so you just smile at Rose instead of giving her a proper answer, and you watch Eridan pour the liquor. Fuck, you'd swear he's doing something stupidly fancy with his hands on purpose, only you're not sure what, exactly, just that he's making them impossible to look away from.

Your glass gets refilled two more times over the increasingly blurry evening meal. Conversation is starting to just wash through you instead of being a thing you do. It seems increasingly likely that you are not in fact a credit to your Empire this evening. But fuck, you're sending Eridan off with Rose, who will eat him alive—Dave and Feferi are also swapping, but you're not worried about Aradia so much; she can throw Dave at the wall without lifting a finger if she needs to—and you're going to be expected to do gross alien sex things with Rose's half-wit slave. You've bitched plenty of times about how getting an officer's commission meant whoring yourself to the Empire, but you never meant it literally.

By the time your party adjourns to your suite, you are one hot second away from a meltdown. Your head is spinning and the feel of John's body heat where he leans against you makes you ill. Eridan smiled at you before he left with Rose and you can't stop thinking about that expression, trying to pick it apart in your head. What was he trying to tell you? Fuck.

"I am assuming you would prefer not to have me watching you," Kanaya says when you reach the public block of the suite. You wince. "I will stand guard outside your door."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can handle myself, thanks," you say. You might be stuck negotiating this week but you're still a _troll_ , for fuck's sake, and if John turns out to be some kind of surprise assassination gift you are entirely comfortable in your ability to tear him to pieces. Even drunk.

"Your highness," Equius says, mopping at his face.

Feferi _leers_ at him, holy shit, where did that come from. "Not shore I should let you off the hook so eel-sily," she says. He twists his towel between his hands until it rips, and she just shows more teeth in her grin. Shit on a stick, she is blackflirting with her bodyguard. With _Equius_.

You grab John by the wrist and drag him into your respiteblock before you can think any harder about Equius and pailing at the same time and lose all capacity for arousal for the next sweep. "Hehe, wow," John says, "you really know what you want, don't you?"

_No_ , you want to snap, because what are you doing here at all, fuck, you'd rather be anywhere than here. But if you let yourself say that you won't stop, the words a thick knot of pressure in your throat; you'll just keep going until you've yelled yourself hoarse. You should have insisted on bringing your moirail. You hate yourself so much right now, and the humans even more.

"Fuck, okay, I—take your pants off," you say. "Let's see what you've got." You take off your jacket as he complies and maybe you shouldn't have drunk so much, probably really you shouldn't have drunk so much, because your hands are having a fucking miserable time with your buttons.

John drops his pants on the floor and you can't help yourself, you look. Humans apparently grow hair around their junk, _weird_ , and his whatever-humans-have dangles there limp and blunt, this fat rounded sausage resting on a pair of furry globes. "How about, uh," he says, "you want me to go down on you?"

"Do I want you to what?" You eye him suspiciously but he doesn't look like he's trying to be rude or anything. He looks uncomfortable, really, if you're reading him right.

His laugh is stupid and awkward and nervous as hell. "Sorry, not a figure of speech you guys have, huh? Uh. You want me to suck you off? Wait, actually, that sounds totally terrible when you actually listen to the words. I just mean, should I use my mouth? Like your, um, Eridan did the other night."

He's babbling like a panicked cadet with only one full pail on Ascension Day, fuck. You squeeze your eyes shut. "You don't want to be here."

"Wow, no, hey, it's an honor and stuff, I don't mind," he says. "I mean, yeah, I'm a little nervous, it's a little weird, you're an alien and a guy and that's kind of, wow, different, but it's cool, I'll get the hang of it."

"Fuck," you say again. "Jegus reeking nookblistering _fuck_ , did that coldblooded terror even _tell_ you about this trade?" You clap your hands over your mouth before you can keep going. Your head swims.

John bursts out laughing, eyes wide. "Wow," he says, "Rose, you mean?" He scratches the back of his head. "Kind of she told me, I mean, she asked if I thought I could handle messing around with you, if the occasion came up. I think sometimes she works out the details of getting what she wants on the fly. Plans within plans, kind of thing."

You hear him shuffling closer but you don't move or open your eyes. When he puts his hands on your thighs you jump. "Don't," you snap before you've thought twice about it.

"Um," he says.

"Fuck this," you elaborate. "Fuck you, fuck, humans, fuck diplomacy, fuck this stupid mission!" Your voice gets louder on each demand, until you're actually yelling by the end of it, and then you ruin any attempt at coming off as threatening by letting out a choked, horrible sob.

Kanaya appears in the doorway. "Karkat," she says, calm but steady. "Is there something you require?"

"Gamzee," you say petulantly. You sniffle a little.

Kanaya nods. "John," she says. "I assume humans are capable of affection intended to soothe as well as to arouse?"

"Yeah," John says, "of course."

"I believe that would be more beneficial for Karkat than sexual service, please."

"Oh. Okay! Sure," John says. "Does that mean I can put my pants back on?"

" _Yes_ ," you say fervently, and blush at the awkward way he laughs at that.

Kanaya kisses the tip of one of your horns, which is pushing it, but you've always kind of had an if-things-were-different understanding about your pale quadrants. "Do not hesitate to call if you require anything else," she says.

You nod. "I know."

John puts his pants back on and you both sit on the floor in front of your recuperacoon. You get up again and go drag a blanket off one of the concupiscent platforms shoved against the walls. It's not enough for a real pile but you feel a little better with it scrunched up under and around you. John leans against your side and rubs one hand over your back, slow and calming. You practice deep breaths.

"So," he says after a minute, "the alien thing is too weird for you, huh?"

"It's not that," you protest. "Well, okay, it's partly that, I guess. But—fuck, it's just. I'm not the kind of troll who wants to go around pailing people who aren't in my quadrants. That isn't _me_."

"Huh," John says. "There were a couple of words in there that I know that still completely failed to make any sense to me."

You take a deep breath, and then suddenly you're trying to explain quadrants from scratch, the natural division of romantic impulses, the importance of taking these things seriously, how frustrated you are that most of your quadrants still aren't stable much less serendipitous, and what the hell is Eridan's problem anyway. At one point John gets up to get you a glass of water when you're starting to sound hoarse, but mostly he just sits with you and listens, occasionally asking the kind of blindingly stupid questions that belong in a Wiggler's First Quadrant Orientation schoolfeed.

You're about half asleep on his shoulder when Kanaya ducks into the block again. "John," she says, "could you please help Karkat undress and get into his recuperacoon?"

"What?" you say, blinking at her muzzily. "Can't sleep yet, gotta wait up for..."

"Eridan and Aradia are back now," Kanaya says. "They're performing their ablutions and then they'll be going to sleep, too. Get some rest."

You're mumbling half-coherent protests as John helps you get up, and your head has decided to secede from the rest of your body by means of explosive agony, _fuck_. You complain about this while John helps you out of your uniform and he says things like, "easy does it," and "up you go."

The humans have gone, the outer door has been locked, and Kanaya has turned the lights off by the time Eridan gets out of the trap. You're hanging onto the side of your recuperacoon, not letting yourself sink into the slime yet, because you really need to be sure you haven't fucked this up as badly as you're afraid of.

"Hey," you say as he comes padding into the room, a lean gray shape, indistinct in the dark. "You good?"

"Aaww, Kar, did you stay up wworryin about me?" he asks.

"No! Shut up." You're already a little relieved just to hear him being obnoxious. He can't have had it too bad. "Just tell me you're okay."

"Right as rain," Eridan says. "Just need a little beauty rest, is all."

You snort. "Well, don't let me keep you from it, then. You need all the help you can get."

The last thing you hear before you slip under the slime is Eridan's "Harsh, Kar," but you don't think he sounds mad. Somehow, that makes you smile.


	7. Chapter 7

"What the grubfucking hell, Eridan!" The acoustics in the ablution block are amazing; your shouting gets some really intense echo here. "You said you were fucking fine!"

"I am!" Eridan insists. "It ain't evven a thing, Kar, seriously! I'm barely sore." He's backed up against the wall of the ablution block, bare-chested, so you can see the souvenirs Rose left all over him: little oblong violet bruises, about the right size and shape to fit a human bite radius.

"She—you—" You don't have words. You're glaring up at him trying to sort out the awful mess of things happening inside your thoracic skeletal cage right now, and Eridan is staring back, looking down at you, head tilted back far enough for the tips of his horns to hit the tile. He's keeping his throat bared to you, and it makes you feel hot and helpless and shaky. "Tell me she didn't...force anything on you."

He shakes his head, and you wince in sympathy at how it must feel to scrape his horns against the wall like that. "Nothin like that." He smiles a little, and that shouldn't make it worse but it does. "It wwas a pretty great time. They ain't got sharp teeth but Ros sure gavve it a good go."

You feel sick. You feel furious. You can't stand to look at him. You can't stand the thought that you agreed to this. He's an adult who can take care of himself and she _didn't_ injure him, honestly; he'd be getting a lot worse on the physical front from Vriska, no question. It's just that Rose freaks you out, and Eridan has no fucking defenses against sophisticated merciless broads. You want to keep him away from her, you want to hide him somewhere, you want to make sure he doesn't get screwed with and wrecked. You—

"Fucking human intoxicants are completely rotting my thinkpan," you say. You step back before you can do anything stupider than you already have. "Get dressed and then come help me with my hair."

"Anythin you say," Eridan says gently, soft and tender as a confession. You flee.

He catches up to you in the sittingblock, his clothes neatly buttoned up, his hair still unstyled and falling in his face in soft curls as it dries. It makes him look so fucking vulnerable. You want to stab yourself for thinking that.

"You ready for me, Lord Vvantas?" he asks.

You have not been ready for a single thing that happened this entire trip. Why start now? You sit down on one of the couches. "Do it," you say.

Eridan sits down beside you and runs his cool hands through your hair. "Kinda too bad wwe gotta go for a pressed an put together look," he says. "You got such a nice curl goin on here, it could do great stuff for you."

"I'm an imperial officer, not a fucking fashion plate," you growl. "Stop hemorrhaging disgrace everywhere, for fuck's sake."

"Yes, sir, Lord Vvantas, sir," Eridan says, and you blush out to the tips of your ears.

You close your eyes and let him work, smearing horrible styling goo into your hair, making it behave. The shifting rustle of cloth on the other side of the room should be Feferi coming out to prepare with you. "How much stuff do we have left to work out, anyway?" you ask. "I'm ready for an _actual_ break, not stupid human sightseeing."

"The last searious conflict is over expansion rights," Feferi says.

You groan.

"I minnow," Feferi says sadly. "I've just about haddock with the whole mess myshellf."

If even Feferi's appallingly cheerful demeanor is failing, this is getting serious. You crack one eye open to look over at her. She's waiting while Aradia re-plaits her hair, and she looks a lot calmer than you feel but she's not smiling. By Feferi standards, that's pretty bad.

"You can do it," Eridan says. Maybe to both of you. One corner of his mouth crooks up a little. "Salmon your courage, princess."

She dredges up a little smile at that, and you wonder yet again how this is _ex_ moirail behavior. "Right!" she says, setting her jaw fiercely. "They'll be saury they tried to string us along!"

Oh, now _there's_ an angle you're happy to play up. "Fuck yes," you agree. "Let's do it."

The two of you stride through the halls of the diplomatic hive like you're on a conquering mission, heels ringing sharply against the floors. Feferi is tired of playing nice and you have had it up to _here_ with being screwed around by smarmy human douchebags who think it's entertaining to fuck you metaphorically and your companions literally. You breeze into the meeting room looking for a fight, and you show the humans all of your fangs in what is only technically a smile.

" _So_ ," you say brightly. "Let's talk about the systems Alternia lays claim to."

It is not, strictly speaking, a productive morning.

On the other hand, it's tremendously therapeutic. You are stubborn. You make demands. You snarl at their suggestions for compromise and raise your voice more often than is probably necessary. Feferi snaps her gills in sharp little glubs of irritation and points out all the places that you've already conceded more than you cared to in order to make this bullshit run smoothly. Rose tries to offer alternate concessions, things they'd be willing to revisit from earlier days in order to make you more interested in cooperating today. You are enjoying being an asshole, and you refuse.

"Jegus," Dave says eventually, "if it was going to make you this cranky to share your boyfriend you could have said so."

" _Fuck. You_ ," you growl back, rising out of your chair. Your fist hits the meeting table and you're no Zahhak but you hear something crack and it doesn't feel like it's your hand. "We have bent over backward trying to play nice with all your shitty alien customs you have been nothing but _vomiting douchecannons_ the whole time, and right this minute I would rather _go back to the fucking war_ than spend another second looking at your diseased festering face!"

You storm out of the meeting room and the door _bang_ s satisfyingly behind you. It's the best thing that's happened since you got here.


	8. INTERLUDE: be the meddling bodyguard

You were outside the room when Karkat's temper vacated the premises; you only heard the end of his outburst. You can see Equius flinch when the door slams open, and then the two of you are following Karkat and Feferi in a determined swirl back to your assigned suite. Eridan and Aradia are waiting there; they appear to have been playing a card game, but they sweep that aside as you return.

"Kar?" Eridan says, in tandem with Aradia's, "What happened?"

"Karcrab totally blew up at them," Feferi says excitedly.

Karkat winces; his anger may be explosive but it never lasts long. "Is it something you could turn to your advantage?" you ask, to forestall him concluding that he has failed.

Feferi nods. "Ab-sole-utely. We refuse to negotiate more today, and let them worry," she says. "Tell them we're discussing whether to try again or just leave."

"Okay," Karkat says. "Then we go back to the table tomorrow and see if they'll give us a better deal?"

"You got it!" Feferi says.

You nod. "You will, however, need to be calm enough to continue tomorrow, so I suggest that you spend the rest of this day doing whatever you feel would be most helpful for your mental state." You stare at Karkat, hoping you won't need to be more direct.

Karkat stares back at you for a long few seconds. "Eridan," he snaps.

Eridan looks up at him immediately. "My lord?"

Karkat grabs him by the wrist and takes off for the respiteblock. The door slams behind them.

"Finally," Feferi says.

You have to agree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I'll try to get chapter 9 out as soon as I can. I know this is an awful place to stop. XD


	9. Chapter 9

The door closes behind you and Eridan stumbles, falling into you. "Kar?" he says, sounding nervous and confused and fuck that wrecks you, why haven't you figured that out before?

"I want," you start, and falter. "Tell me you—" no, that's not right either, and too _few_ words is never your problem. Fuck. You reach up and cup his face between both your hands and he blushes right out to the tips of his fins. "Is this okay?"

"I been tellin you since wwe got here," he says. "Anythin you wwant." You can see the desperate hope on his face and you don't need to ask, except you do, because you are fucking sick of making decisions for him and this matters too much.

"Tell me," you say, "what _you_ want."

Eridan swallows hard. "You," he croaks.

Your ribs are three sizes too tight and you feel like you might cry. You pull him down slowly and when his lips brush yours he does make a sound like he's trying not to sob. You close your eyes and kiss him again, barely more red than pale, gentle as you can. You have known Eridan Ampora for most of your life, and over the sweeps he has gone from insufferable to obnoxious to familiar and comfortable, and now, apparently, you're finally seeing something soft and vulnerable at his core that you want to pull in close and hide from the entire galaxy.

His lips part, letting you in, and you take the invitation as slowly as you can bear. His shoulders are shaking. You stroke his back as his tongue meets yours, leaning into him, dizzy with feeling so much. You're not sure you can put all your feelings into words, and you hope he's getting the idea from the kiss.

"Kar, oh my god, Kar," he whispers against your mouth. "This is really happenin."

"Yeah," you say. "Yeah, it is." You reach up for his collar and start unbuttoning his shirt. "I...I want to see you."

For a second he cringes. "Evven wwith the bites an all?"

You nod. They bother the fuck out of you, those bruises, but you've stopped pretending you don't know _why_. "You poor pitiful bastard."

"Oh," he says, this soft, wondering exhale. You force yourself to undo all the buttons on his shirt instead of just ripping the thing off; you want to do this right.

He doesn't even try to rescue the shirt when you push it off his shoulders, just standing there enraptured with you and letting you touch his bared skin. You kiss the nearest bruise, right below the sleek curve of his collarbone. He trembles, hands on your waist like he needs the anchor to steady him. You kiss a second mark, then a third, slow and lingering, lips pressed to his cool skin.

"Can I touch you, too?" he asks.

"Yeah, fuck, of course," you say. You're less forgiving with your own shirt than you were with his, sending buttons ricocheting off under the furniture, and his hands trail down your bare back with a delicacy that makes a shiver run straight down your spine. You twine your arms around his waist and just cling to him for a minute, listening to the thud of his bloodpusher where your ear is pressed to his chest, feeling the brushed-silk smoothness of his skin.

He combs his fingers through your hair, making a mess of the crisp style he fixed it in for you a few hours ago, and it feels wonderful. You rub your cheek against his chest, stretch up to kiss the tip of one fin. He circles the base of one of your horns, massaging your scalp there, and you trill helplessly.

"I wwanna make you feel good," Eridan says to you, soft and sort of desperate, like that's what he feels the need to plead for.

"You're, hha, off to a really good start," you say, leaning into his hand. "I just. Don't stop touching me."

He makes a strangled little noise and when you look up to try to read his face his cheeks are wet. You lay a hand on his cheek and he shakes his head. "Kind a thought I wwas out a the runnin a long time ago, is all," he says.

You shrug awkwardly. "Yeah, well. Things change." You take a step backward, and he looks alarmed until you take his hand. "Come on, let's lie down."

"Anythin, wwoww, yeah." He follows you, and you lie down together on one of the unused concupiscent platforms. You think you should feel like you're moving too fast, but you don't; you _know_ him, know all the ways that he's a mess and all the ways he tries to make up for it.

Lying beside each other is more comfortable than standing and craning your neck to look up at him anyway. You reach up to touch his fin, then hesitate. "Are they sensitive?" you ask. According to the movies they are, but you've never actually been up close and personal with a seadweller before to know if it's true.

Eridan nods. "Specially along the backs. Gill edges, too."

The idea of touching his gills is almost _too_ intimate; you feel fluttery and shaky just thinking about it. But you cup your hand around his fin and trace the back edge of it, and he croons for you so sweetly you could just melt. You can feel yourself getting wet for him, a languid, needy pulse deep in your nook.

You lean in to kiss him again, and he shifts to press against you, lean and muscular. You can feel the swell of his bulge as he moves, the friction against your own too-tight pants. Your tongues tangle, wet and slow; your fingertips draw patterns along the backs of his fins. He trembles in your arms and you want him, want him to be _yours_.

You don't want to rush him, though, god. He's been so fucking _willing_ , throwing himself into this role, doing whatever you asked for. You want to take this slowly enough that he can be sure of every step, not just trying to appease you.

"Oh please, Kar, please," Eridan whimpers, clinging to you. Okay, maybe you're trying too hard to hold off.

"Yes," you say, helpless to say anything else, rolling away from him so you can attack the buttons of your pants. Your elbows clip each other as you both wiggle free of the rest of your clothes. Reason kicks in for you then, and an unpleasant realization. "Fuck, this stupid human platform doesn't have a bucket well."

Eridan looks pained, and you think if he suggests you go without you'll...well, okay, you'll be a little grossed out but you'll go for it, that's how frustrated you are. He doesn't, though. Instead he looks around the room and then gets up to go grab a shallow glass basin off a cabinet on the other side of the room. He pours out the smooth little stones in it and grins at you. "Not traditional exactly, but wwe can make do, yeah?"

"Let's just hope that wasn't some kind of religious artifact," you say, but you're grinning back. "Get back here."

"I'm all yours, Lord Vvantas," Eridan says, and his smile kills you.

You let your gaze drop to his bulge as he comes back to the platform. "Pretty sure I can think of a good way to put you to use," and oh god you feel ridiculous using lines like that, but his bulge writhes when you say it, and that makes it damn hard to be sorry. He drops the basin next to the platform and is already reaching for you when he climbs back on. You spread your legs, pulling him down on top of you. "I want you in me so bad," you whisper, and that's another terrible porno line but it makes Eridan sob.

"I'm yours," he's chanting as you get him settled between your thighs, "I'm yours, I'm yours, _Kar_ ," and his bulge slides up into your nook sleek and cool, twisting slowly, wonderfully thick. You choke on your moan and you think you might cry, it's so good.

"Yes, yes, yes," you gasp against his fin as he curls deeper. "F-fuck, I've needed this since we got here, I've." Your cheeks burn but you make yourself keep talking. "I t-tried in the trap, that first night, after you—with your mouth, oh fuck, yes, yes—but I couldn't, ah, make it feel like this."

Eridan makes a sound like you're breaking him. "That's the most pitiful fuckin thing I evver heard," he says. His bulge ripples in your nook and you want him to never take it out, want him to keep filling you and twisting inside you always. "Please, Kar, I—" and he cuts himself off with a whine.

You kiss his fin, lick it, breathe warm against the wet trail you've left. "Please what, you precious disaster? Tell me what you want. God, tell me what you want, I need you to feel this good too."

He kisses your mouth, hard and desperate, nicking his own lip on the sharpness of his fangs. You lap up his blood, touch the torn spot with the very tip of your tongue. "Please fill me up too," he says. Yeah, the porno dialogue is surprisingly hot.

The two of you have to shift a little to make it work both ways at once, tangling your legs together, getting your bulge redirected instead of pressed up between your bellies. But then you find the slippery soft entrance to his nook and slide up into him, flexing and uncoiling, swelling to fill him. He makes sweet glubbing whimpers as the two of you fall into sync, pulsing and twisting inside each other. It's like sharing a vascular system, like the goddamn tide, like all the stupid metaphors in all the stupid romances you don't let yourself bother with anymore. You're moving with each other, _for_ each other, so intimate and so close. The desperation is gone and instead there's this beautiful slow unfolding sense of _rightness_.

Pleasure builds so slowly that you don't even realize how close you've gotten until you feel Eridan pulling at your shoulder. "Bucket, yeah?" he says.

"Fuck," you say, "yes," as you realize how much heat is gathering in your nook, how heavy and full you've gotten. "Help me."

You're both a little awkward as you get up on your knees and wedge the repurposed basin between you, but neither of you actually slips. The change in position makes the pressure almost unbearable, so much more intense—you're so ready to spill you can taste it. You cling to him, panting for breath, shuddering with tension as you twist and push inside him and he pulses hard inside you and—

"Now," he says helplessly, maybe a question, and you nod frantically as you feel yourself hit the point of no return. Your nook goes into spasms and Eridan keens, thin and reedy, and then you feel him fluttering and clenching around you, too. Fluid splashes out of you into the basin as his bulge responds to your climax, a helpless, thrilling wash of relief through your entire system. You hold onto Eridan and pet him as he trembles his way through it along with you, and you just feel so fucking warm and safe and _grateful_ , it's ridiculous.

The basin isn't deep enough and some of your mixed slurry spills over the edge, but you have trouble caring. It's not like you have any way of preserving it in the first place. You'll...just have to do this again sometime when you're back with the Fleet. The idea is making you grin to yourself.

Your bulges slowly retract, releasing each other, and you ease back down onto the platform carefully. Eridan moves the basin to the floor and then crawls back onto the platform with you, smiling shyly. He opens his mouth to say something and then just shuts it again.

"No, what?" you say. "You have something to say, then say it."

He shakes his head. "It wwas just gonna be somethin stupid. Thanks for that, it wwas amazin, that kind a stuff."

You snort. "You're welcome. And it was." You pull him into your arms and tuck your head under his chin. "Now's the part where you tell me you're a cuddler."

"Alwways wwanted to be," he says.

You bite his collarbone fondly. "Good enough."


End file.
